Evaluating the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Officially Recommended in China for COVID-19 Using Ontology-Based Side-Effect Prediction Framework (OSPF) and Deep Learning.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Wuhan has imposed a huge influence in terms of public health and economy on society. However, no effective drugs or vaccines have been developed so far. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been considered as a promising supplementary treatment of this disease due to its clinically proven performance in many severe diseases, like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Meanwhile, many reports suggest that the side-effects (SE) of TCM prescriptions cannot be ignored in treating COVID-19 as it often leads to dramatic degradation of the patients' physical condition. Systematic evaluation of TCM regarding its latent SE becomes a burning issue. AIM: In this study, we used an ontology-based side-effect prediction framework (OSPF) developed from our previous work and Artificial Neural Network (ANN)-based deep learning, to evaluate the TCM prescriptions officially recommended by China for the treatment of COVID-19. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The OSPF developed from our previous work was implemented in this study, where an ontology-based model separated all ingredients in a TCM prescription into two categories: hot and cold. A database was created by converting each TCM prescription into a vector which contained ingredient dosages, corresponding hot/cold attribution and safe/unsafe labels. This allowed for training of the ANN model. A safety indicator (SI), as a complement to SE possibility, was then assigned to each TCM prescription. According to the proposed SI, from high to low, the recommended prescription list could be optimized. Furthermore, in interest of expanding the potential treatment options, SIs of other well-known TCM prescriptions, which are not included in the recommended list but are used traditionally to cure flu-like diseases, are also evaluated via this method. RESULTS: Based on SI, QFPD-T, HSBD-F, PMSP, GCT-CJ, SF-ZSY, and HSYF-F were the safest treatments in the recommended list, with SI scores over 0.8. PESP, QYLX-F, JHQG-KL, SFJD-JN, SHL-KFY, PESP1, XBJ-ZSY, HSZF-F, PSSP2, FFTS-W, and NHSQ-W were the prescriptions most likely to be unsafe, with SI scores below 0.1. In the additional lists of other TCM prescriptions, the indicators of XC-T, SQRS-S, CC-J, and XFBD-F were all above 0.8, while QF-Y, XZXS-S, BJ-S, KBD-CJ, and QWJD-T's indicators were all below 0.1. CONCLUSIONS: In total, there were 10 TCM prescriptions with indicators over 0.8, suggesting that they could be considered in treating COVID-19, if suitable. We believe this work could provide reasonable suggestions for choosing proper TCM prescriptions as a supplementary treatment for COVID-19. Furthermore, this work introduces a novel and informative method which could help create recommendation list of TCM prescriptions for the treatment of other diseases.

On the Baliga's Figure-Of-Merits (BFOM) Enhancement of a Novel GaN Nano-Pillar Vertical Field Effect Transistor (FET) with 2DEG Channel and Patterned Substrate.

A novel enhancement-mode vertical GaN field effect transistor (FET) with 2DEG for reducing the on-state resistance (RON) and substrate pattern (SP) for enhancing the breakdown voltage (BV) is proposed in this work. By deliberately designing the width and height of the SP, the high concentrated electric field (E-field) under p-GaN cap could be separated without dramatically impacting the RON, turning out an enhanced Baliga's Figure-Of-Merits (BFOM, BV2/RON). Verified by experimentally calibrated ATLAS simulation, the proposed device with a 700-nm-long and 4.6-µm-width SP features six times higher BFOM in comparison to the FET without patterned substrate. Furthermore, the proposed pillar device and the SP inside just occupy a nano-scale area, enabling a high-density integration of such devices, which renders its high potential in future power applications.

An Ontology-Based Artificial Intelligence Model for Medicine Side-Effect Prediction: Taking Traditional Chinese Medicine as an Example.

In this work, an ontology-based model for AI-assisted medicine side-effect (SE) prediction is developed, where three main components, including the drug model, the treatment model, and the AI-assisted prediction model, of the proposed model are presented. To validate the proposed model, an ANN structure is established and trained by two hundred forty-two TCM prescriptions. These data are gathered and classified from the most famous ancient TCM book, and more than one thousand SE reports, in which two ontology-based attributions, hot and cold, are introduced to evaluate whether the prescription will cause SE or not. The results preliminarily reveal that it is a relationship between the ontology-based attributions and the corresponding predicted indicator that can be learnt by AI for predicting the SE, which suggests the proposed model has a potential in AI-assisted SE prediction. However, it should be noted that the proposed model highly depends on the sufficient clinic data, and hereby, much deeper exploration is important for enhancing the accuracy of the prediction.

Admission Control Over Internet of Vehicles Attached With Medical Sensors for Ubiquitous Healthcare Applications.

Wireless technologies and vehicle-mounted or wearable medical sensors are pervasive to support ubiquitous healthcare applications. However, a critical issue of using wireless communications under a healthcare scenario rests at the electromagnetic interference (EMI) caused by radio frequency transmission. A high level of EMI may lead to a critical malfunction of medical sensors, and in such a scenario, a few users who are not transmitting emergency data could be required to reduce their transmit power or even temporarily disconnect from the network in order to guarantee the normal operation of medical sensors as well as the transmission of emergency data. In this paper, we propose a joint power and admission control algorithm to schedule the users' transmission of medical data. The objective of this algorithm is to minimize the number of users who are forced to disconnect from the network while keeping the EMI on medical sensors at an acceptable level. We show that a fixed point of proposed algorithm always exists, and at the fixed point, our proposed algorithm can minimize the number of low-priority users who are required to disconnect from the network. Numerical results illustrate that the proposed algorithm can achieve robust performance against the variations of mobile hospital environments.